But do you agree that the goal should be, more or less, to create a world where ethnicity, sex, and other body attributes matter as little as, say, eye color does today?

If so, what is the plan to achieve that goal? Don't we achieve it by actually acting that way as much as possible? That's what makes sense to me.

Suppose we, in the name of equality or diversity or fairness, actually elevate the importance of bodily attributes like ethnicity and sex, deliberately considering them during hiring, and build that practice into our culture. Having practiced doing it wrong for however many years, will we someday decide it isn't needed anymore and get rid of it?

When is the disease distinct from the cure? At a certain point, we need to move forward and strive towards a harmonious ideal. Otherwise we delay true equality.

So I shouldn't celebrate the interesting and cool things about other peoples' cultures (and my own)? That's sad.

I agree it may be idealistic, especially because part of the problem is people thinking themselves into a category, and adopting it as an identity. It is however the right direction, because all this "racial" problems are caused by categorization of people in the first place.

> We live in a world where this is not remotely possible

No, you live in a COUNTRY where that seems not remotely possible.

Why? Let me apply the principle you claim to be the case in a different, ahistorical way:

"'We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about denigrating and enslaving blacks, and NOT MENTION IT.' We live in a world where this is not remotely possible. Suggesting it is the worst sort of idealism." --some Southern slave owner, 1859

The same could be applied to historical anti-semitic movements, anti-suffrage groups--anti-anything groups, really.

It can be boiled down to: "We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about treating other people badly because of their appearance or where they are from, and NOT MENTION IT," and people like you saying, "That's impossible. We will always be just as hateful and prejudiced as the worst of us are now. You shouldn't even suggest that it's possible to make any progress in human society."

It boggles my mind that you could even think this way. But, then, people thinking and acting in unreasonable ways is the root of these problems.

  > "We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about race, and
  > NOT MENTION IT." We live in a world where this is not remotely possible.
  > Suggesting it is the worst sort of idealism.

This saddens me.

I'm somewhat curious on knowing some other data points on your spectrum of (bad) idealism..

But the 'not remotely possible' claim sounds like you've decided for all of us that we're incapable of ever thinking of skin colour in the future the same way we think of, say, hair colour today.

I suspect your position is based upon your current cultural surroundings, in which case I'd prescribe travel. Lots of it.

Just to point out... the US is the western only country on the planet which cares, or even mentions, people's skin colour/race AT ALL.

Literally every other western country calls people... people. A man is "a man" not "a green/blue/pink/red/etc man". A women is "a women" not "a green/blue/pink/red/etc woman".

Continuously giving skin colour qualifiers in descriptions of people... is (to non-US people) bizarre, and seems to be a large part of the language used to keep racism alive in the US.

That's as far as I've been able to tell so far anyway. :(